Literary Birthday – 29 November – Madeleine L’Engle

Madeleine L’Engle was born 29 November 1918, and died 6 September 2007

10 Quotes

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.

With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, quite apart from me.

A great painting, or symphony, or play, doesn’t diminish us, but enlarges us, and we, too, want to make our own cry of affirmation to the power of creation behind the universe. This surge of creativity has nothing to do with competition, or degree of talent.

Art should communicate with as many people as possible.

A book comes and says, ‘Write me.’ My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.

Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.

But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career.

Madeleine L’Engle was an American writer best known for young-adult fiction, particularly the Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels.